How Extreme Weather Like Libya’s Flooding Is Linked to Climate Change

Scientists have predicted for decades that burning fossil fuels would push average temperatures ever higher and conjure dangerous extremes. A new branch of science, called extreme event attribution, that’s emerged in the past 15 years connects global warming to severe episodes of weather with a much greater level of specificity. Many individual heat spells, storms, floods, droughts and wildfires are now routinely tied to climate change.

Heat waves are the weather events most directly linked to humanity’s greenhouse gas pollution. And heat, along with dryness and wind, fuels forest fires, which is why scientists have become so confident that climate change is making wildfires in the western US, Australia and elsewhere much worse. (The US fire season is two months longer than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.) Global warming is making tropical cyclones — also called hurricanes or typhoons — more intense, but not necessarily more frequent. Warmer water and moister air — two results of global warming — provide added fuel to tropical cyclones and other storms.